Hunter 5 Minute Fan from Lowe’s

The Hunter 5 Minute Fan

I recently purchased 2 of the Hunter 5 Minute Fans from Lowe’s.  I bought the nickel fan base with the dark wood or black blades (you can flip them over).  Lowe’s had a special, for every fan you purchased you would receive a $20 gift card.  That brought the price down from $99 to $79…cool!

Installation:

I got home with the 2 boxes, they were light but larger than some of the other fan boxes, this is because it was 90% put together already.  The instructions were fairly easy to read, although I made the mistake of putting the washer that you should only put on the fan when you have a ceiling of less than 8 feet tall.  It was a little difficult to get off once I noticed it shouldn’t be there, but other than that…for my first fan installation, it was pretty painless.  I replaced an existing light with the fan, so I didn’t have to drill any holes and there was already a switch hooked up.  The mounting bracket screws into an existing wire box that is in the ceiling, or you can put a wire box in your desired location yourself.

Now, I wouldn’t say the first fan install was 5 minutes, but from start to finish, the second fan was probably 15 minutes or so.  That includes setting up the ladder, finding which breaker to turn off and taking down the existing light.

I would recommend any of the 5 Minute Fan series from Hunter.  I would also recommend Lowe’s, as they have specials from time to time and the special for the fans was a good deal and easy to obtain the rebate.  My fans have been installed about a week and provide plenty of air circulation, have reduced the amount of times my air conditioner turns on - while keeping my home at a comfortable temperature - and they use about the same amount of power as a 65W light bulb at high speed.

My Review - Samsung SCH-i760 and Motorola S9

Introducing the Samsung SCH i760 Smartphone and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Headset

I have had my Samsung SCH i760 Smartphone (with service through Verizon Wireless) and Motorola S9 Bluetooth Headset for about 2 months now. I can and have recommended both of these products.

I previously had the LG VX8600, which is a thin flip phone, which I would also recommend as well.

The Samsung SCH i760 Smartphone has a ton of features. It has touchscreen operation (you can use your fingers or use the hide-away stylus), Windows Mobile 6 operating system, 1.3MP camera, video camcorder, WIFI, microSD slot and much more. With the Windows Mobile standardized operating system, this device is very customizable. Windows Mobile comes with the mobile version of Windows Media Player (WMA, WMV, WAV and MP3 capabilities with the feature of synchronizing your mobile Media Player with your desktop Media Player to update your playlists, music and videos), File Explorer, Games, Calculator, Office Mobile (Excel, Powerpoint and Word), Notes, Tasks, Picsel Browser (kind of like the Apple iPhone and Touch browser) and Internet Explorer, Active Sync and Wireless Sync, Task Manager (to close programs instead of restarting the phone when it starts to bog down), and Windows Update that keeps you up to date when new patches come out, without having to go to the wireless store to update your phone. There are many programs that are available for FREE or for a small price. Check below for some recommended items.

I find the i760 to be a very great phone. It keeps me organized by keeping all of my ideas in the Notes program (you can type, write or draw), I can set tasks which appear on the main screen and you can set alerts of your tasks, to remind you of things at certain times.

The battery life extends as you begin to stress it and charge it. The first few times you use it hard, listening to music, etc, it only lasts a few hours on the slim battery, a little longer on the extended battery. The life takes about a week or two to work at full capacity. Now my slim battery lasts about 6 hours listening to music all day and maybe half an hour on the phone, after the 6 hours I tend to turn the music off and leave the last of the battery for a short call if I need to make one on the way home from work. The extended battery will last all day listening to music at work and still leave battery left for phone calls and some moderate web surfing. Using both batteries will allow you to do just about anything you want all day, especially great if you are traveling.

PROS:

Not many phones have WIFI, although there are adapters you can buy, this phone has WIFI built in, meaning you can connect to the internet for free, just as you can on a laptop. (You can connect online through the cellular network as well for an additional cost)

Small, not much bigger than my LG VX8600.

Slide out keyboard, easier to type than a touchscreen only keyboard phone - and may be easier than T9 for some people.

Touchscreen as well as ‘joystick’ usability.

Works very well with the Motorola S9.

Keeps you organized.

Upgradeable and customizable.

Comes with a standard and extended life battery.

Charges quick.

Light to carry on a waist clip or pocket.

Better reception than I’ve had in a phone previously.

Well built, strong, does not feel like you’re going to break it while using it.

Simple but professional looking design.

Built in speaker, which is pretty loud for the size, so you can play music while entertaining or going to sleep.

CONS:

When you are doing a lot on the phone, text messaging can be a pain; I’ve had the phone skip letters, having to go back and retype. If you type slower or use the word-hints, you will have more luck.

No T9 texting option.

The SEND and END buttons can be in a weird place when talking on the phone. Since I use the S9 to make most of my calls, it’s not such a big deal, but I have hung up on people by accident when using the phone up to my ear - you just need to get used to a higher placement of your fingers to avoid that mistake.

WIFI uses a lot of power. Not that it’s really a con, just turn off the feature until you want to use it.

The Motorola S9 Bluetooth Headset

The Motorola S9 is a stereo headset for listening to music (if your phone has the ability, which the i760 does) and mono (left side) when making a phone call. The S9 is very lightweight and as long as the buds are adjusted correctly, it will not hurt your ears.

It comes in a few colors, red as shown, mine is blue on the inside and I believe there may be one other color.

There are 3 buttons on each side of the headset. On the left side, there is a touch-sensitive + and - volume, with a Phone push-button in the middle. The right side has skip forward and skip back, touch-sensitive buttons with a Play/Pause push-button in the middle. If you are listening to music when you get a call, the music will pause, the i760 rings as well as the headphones in stereo, push the Phone button and start talking. The S9 has a built in microphone for phone conversations. Once the phone call is done, you can push the Phone button to hang up the call and push Play to begin listening to music again. You may also initiate a call by pushing the Phone button, waiting for the tone and speak, “Call Mom, Home,” for example. It will repeat back to you, confirm by saying yes and within seconds the phone is ringing. You can do all this within 30 feet of your phone, though I’ve had luck up to 60 feet, depending on line of site with the headphones and the phone.

I am unsure how it sounds on the other end of the phone, but I have never had a complaint about not being able to hear what I am saying. The S9 is rather simple, convenient and works very well with my Samsung SCH i760. The battery life is about 7 hours of constant use. It charges very quickly and is a great addition to any cell phone you may have.

Things you need for your Samsung SCH i760:

• FREE Microsoft Live Search - Search movies, gas prices, get directions and much more
• FREE MSNBC Mobile News - Watch videos, look at photos of the week, read headline, technology, business and more.
• FREE Playlist Manager - Hasn’t been updated in a while, but is the only good free program I’ve found. Allows you to select the MP3s you want to play instead of having to select another song after the current song is done. You can use the S9 to switch songs on the playlist and pause songs that are playing.
• FREE Weather Watcher
• Seidio Rubberized Slim and Extended Case with Holster

LINKS:

• CNET Review (8.0/10)
• Samsung Website for i760
• Motorola S9 Website

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My Roomba 535 Review

I’ve had my Roomba 535 for about 4 months now. I never owned or knew anyone that owned the older models, but the new 500 series, from what I’ve read, has really improved from the older version.

My 535 is in the lower-middle area of the Roomba 500 series and I have only seen the Roomba 535 available for sale online. The 530 and 560 are available in stores, but the 530 does not come with one (where the 530 does not) ‘lighthouse’ and the 560 (includes 2 lighthouses) is a good amount more expensive than the 535. You could buy a lighthouse for your 530, but one feature that makes the 535 better, is it is upgradeable. You can remove the middle module and make it, basically, the 570, the highest Roomba in the 500 series. With the module upgrade you can use the wireless command center, which allows you to set up to 7 different cleaning times for the Roomba. The 535, stock, only allows one setting, such as every morning at 8AM. I bought the 535 because it comes with 1 lighthouse (which is all I need right now) and it has the option to upgrade.

For people that have never owned a Roomba before, you may be wondering what a ‘Lighthouse’ is. A lighthouse serves to purposes, to be a temporary wall and a ‘permanent’ virtual wall. The temporary wall/lighthouse tells the Roomba to finish one room or area before it goes to the other side of the lighthouse. By moving the switch to Virtual Wall, the Roomba will never go on the other side. The Roomba does a very good job at vacuuming. Even if you feel your carpet is clean, it will pick up dirt and pet hair that you most likely won’t pick up if you vacuum yourself. The Roomba tends to repeat areas and it does take more time than if you did it yourself, but in return you get a clean home and – the best part – you aren’t the one cleaning. The Roomba is quiet, a lot more quiet than a normal upright vacuum, so you can watch TV while it is vacuuming. You will have a new view of what clean is. You can set the Roomba to go out on a schedule or you can click the clean button. The Roomba plays a ‘beep beep’ backup noise and slowly backs up, the brushes and the vacuum turn on and it starts to do its thing. The Roomba goes underneath furniture and beds to help on the dust and allergies, it can go on hard floors and carpet and do a good job cleaning on any floor type, it also moves along walls and uses its spinning side brush to pull dirt close to the walls and in tight corners, as if you were using your vacuum hose extension. It is best if you let the Roomba do what it wants, in most cases, even though it seems it’s repeating areas. It may be sensing more dirt in those areas.

When the Roomba senses an extraordinary amount of debris, it will spin around and give extra care to the area, you can tell when the Roomba senses these areas, not only by its reaction, but the blue dirt sensor light illuminates. The Roomba also has a ‘Spot’ button that makes the Roomba focus on a small area, it spins in circles about 3 feet out and then it goes back to the middle. If there are things in the way of this 3 foot radius, it will adjust accordingly. The Roomba also has a ‘Dock’ button that tells the Roomba to focus more on getting back to the dock than cleaning. I use this if I want it to clean the kitchen and then go back without doing a full cleaning. It tends to still clean a lot, which isn’t bad.

The lighthouse is a huge feature for the Roomba. The Roomba will clean better because it is not going all over a huge space, running into things and running out of battery before it cleans everything. I split my 800 square foot apartment into two sections with the one lighthouse, it cleans my bedroom, bathroom and hall and then once the Roomba communicates with the lighthouse to say it’s ready to cross, it goes and cleans the living room and kitchen. It cleans better and faster. It will clean my whole apartment and park itself back in the docking station before it dies, which is about 3 hours.

Sometimes the Roomba will get stuck or stop, which is no big deal. It doesn’t get stuck too often and the top reason it shuts off is because the brushes need to be cleaned. The best thing to do is to pull out as much hair as you can from the ends of the brushes and the cogs/drives that move the brushes. You will have to do it more often in the beginning, but normally you would have to clean the brushes every other time it cleans. You don’t need to dump the trash can too much, even though it’s small, but at first you will because it will pick up a lot of fur and dirt. I ran my Roomba every day for the first week and now I run it between every other day and every 4 days. Sometimes I start it before I go to work and sometimes I do it while I’m doing my weekend laundry or while I’m watching TV after work. I’ve found that maybe starting it before work may not be the best idea because if it does get stuck, you don’t have much of an idea of where it could be, maybe under the bed, maybe under the furniture…it depends on how large your home is. If it’s running while you are home you will at least know where you heard it get quiet, like in the bedroom or in the living room. As the Roomba finishes up and parks, it makes a ‘Hey look, I did it’ noise, letting you know it parked correctly in the base and is now charging. I have only had it mis-park once. If it is unable to park, it usually turns and tries again.

I would recommend the Roomba 535, in particular, because I think it is a great investment, it’s a good deal for the money and it saves you time while keeping your place clean all of the time. I will be adding pictures and cleaning up the text this weekend!

My Linksys NAS200 Review

I have had the NAS200 for about 4 months now. I did quite a bit of research before I bought the unit and found that there isn’t much of selection for Network Attached Drives. There are a couple that are less expensive but they seemed really cheap and when I found reviews they were hard to set up and only worked with some people. There were also a few on the other end that were extremely expensive. There was one or two I was looking at in this price range that had hard drives included, but since I had an extra hard drive I wanted to use and I like the option to expand in the future, I bought the Linksys NAS200. The system was extremely easy to install, it’s small, quiet and has two USB ports for even more expansion, using thumb drives. Setting up the connection on the computers was easy as well. Installing any drive into the NAS200 will need to be formatted, so if you have a hard drive full of information that you are putting into your NAS200, you will need to copy the info onto a DVD or another hard drive, let the NAS200 format it and then copy it back over. Copying the files back to the Linksys is when I first realized the speed factor. It took about 2 1/2 – 3 hours to transfer 78k files, 9k folders, 30 gigs. Now don’t let that discourage you.

If you are running a small business that will require a lot of access to a lot of shared files all day, this would not be your choice. If you run a small web based business where you would need to access files but you tend to keep them open, working on them throughout the day and you have a small budget, this may be your choice. I personally have a desktop and laptop and work with websites and other small projects a lot. It is extremely convenient to be able to access the same, updated file from either computer whenever I need the file. I store my music, pictures, 3D and websites files as well as my resume and little files on the NAS200. It seems like I have just been putting files that I keep temporarily on my computers and the rest on the drive.

Now to get your mind working with ideas even more, there are programs (for about $40) that will synchronize your Outlook .pst file, like a home-based Microsoft Exchange Server. I found these programs after I tried storing my .pst on the drive and using that for the desktop and laptop. What I found was only one computer can access the .pst at a time, you would have to close out Outlook on one computer before you put it to sleep or just close it out in general, before you can access the .pst in Outlook from the other computer. I still have yet to buy one of these programs, but when I do I will write an interview about my experience with the program I choose.

Overall I would recommend the Linksys NAS200. I’ve never had a connection problem with it and the convenience way outweighs the lag for me. I have not tried the backup button on the unit yet but I will amend this review when I do, I will also be adding pictures soon. I hope this review was helpful to you.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Shared files
• Multiple computers can access at the same time
• SATA (ONLY) (But may be considered a negative too, due to higher price and you may not have a SATA hard drive laying around)
• Two hard drive capacity
• UPnP AV server
• Supports individual, JBOD, RAID 0 and RAID 1
• Comes with software (Some other network storage devices I looked at did not come with bundled software. From the reviews I read, some people had quite a bit of trouble getting their other storage device to work, if at all.)
• Easy to set up
• Quiet
• Two USB ports for thumb drive storage

Cons

• Slow when saving, copying, transferring
• Accessing folders is a little slow, but bearable
• No gigabit Ethernet
• No auto backup (although there is a ‘Backup’ button on the system)
• NAS200 needs to format the hard drives you put into it before it can use it (Copy the info on the hard drive, let NAS200 format it and then copy the info back to the hard drive. 3 hours with 30 GB)

My Vizio 47″ LCD HDTV GV47LF Review

Time to upgrade
Last Christmas my mother bought me a 37 inch LCD TV (L37). I picked it out after I did some research, and at the time price was the biggest issue. It was about $700 dollars shipped from TigerDirect. I moved into my new apartment and after some hard work I received a raise at my job. The TV is great, but it was small for my living room…well too small for what I wanted.
I did 4 or 5 months of research for a 46-52 inch LCD TV. My conclusion always came back to the Vizio GV47LF. 47 inches is 10 inches bigger than the TV I currently had and it had 1080P resolution, 2 HDMI inputs, 2 component inputs and great ratings from other satisfied customers. After watching the market for these 4 or 5 months, the price hadn’t really changed too. I already had a Vizio and Vizio is a product of Samsung, which is a widely known brand and their TVs that I had seen in the store looked incredible, rich and vibrant.

I finally bought the TV, the last week in October. I knew that the price couldn’t go down much more. I received the TV and took off work to make sure to be there for the freight delivery. I hooked it up and within minutes of having it delivered it was on, watching HD cable. The TV broke 15 minutes later and wouldn’t do anything but flicker. At this point it was a $1150 blue strobe light. I had a third party company, provided by the Vizio warranty, come out and try to fix the TV without any luck. My experience with the third party company and Vizio’s customer service help was excellent; they were all very helpful and nice. I called Vizio back and requested a new unit, they scheduled to come pick up my old, broken unit and deliver a new unit to me. It wasn’t until November 22nd, almost a full month, before I had a working TV. The lesson for me was to make sure I know who the supplier is. The supplier, which I shall not name at this time, had a great rating – that is why I decided to purchase from them, plus they had mail in rebates to recover most of the shipping cost. I may have just gotten a lemon and maybe when the repair man came to fix the TV, the wrong parts were thought to have been broken, therefore the wrong parts were replaced.

It is now December 18th and I have been more than happy with this TV. The hook ups are easy to get to, the case is thin and shiny, bright (500cmd), contrast is nice (800:1) and also has a dynamic contrast option, and the HD channels are incredible. I will only watch a show that is not HD if it isn’t available in HD. I do not like to watch non-HD TVs when I am out at a restaurant because they are so boring and dull. HD always looks great, football and basketball are great and with the screen being so big, at some camera views it seems like you are there. There have been a few times when watching the news I felt like the news anchor was sitting in my living room, the lighting was just right and the size of the news anchor was in approximate size of what they would be if they were literally sitting in my living room. When playing Hitman 2 on the old Vizio, I could never quite adjust the picture good enough to be able to see through the dark corridors in the game unless I washed out the picture. The contrast ratio (the difference between the black and white pixels, measured on…) is nice because I can see in the dark without having to make any adjustments in the picture from the normal settings.

I didn’t used to understand the need for an HD DVD player or a BluRay player, but with the screen so big and being used to the HD channels, you can notice – not so much that the picture is bad, but that it could and should be better because it is on DVD instead of through the TV. This article is what really brought my attention to the DVD resolution. I haven’t bought a DVD in a few years so the newer non-HD DVDs are probably better than the DVDs I have, but my next purchase for my home entertainment system is going to be an HD DVD player.
The only aspect of the TV that I do not is the sound. You cannot adjust it anywhere near listenable; to me anyway, it’s very MID range no matter how you adjust it. I turned the speakers and I just have the sound go through my center channel. The speakers are detachable but I left them on because I like the silver to go along with the black, which the case is. My center channel was purchased at least 6 years ago and a subwoofer that I just purchased about 10 months ago.

I would recommend the Vizio GV47LF to anyone. Make sure the source you are buying from has good credentials and I recommend to have separated speakers and subwoofer, such as an all-in-one home theater. Vizio has come a long way with their TVs and they definitely have the best bang for the buck. Be on the lookout for the new Vizio Gellevia 52 inch LCD that came out recently. It has 4 HDMI inputs, 2 component inputs.